PARIS: Student protesters started fires in at least two French schools on Thursday, while teachers were inadvertently splashed with petrol at a third, officials said, amid increasingly violent clashes over staff shortages and dilapidated buildings.

At Marseille’s Victor Hugo high school, the teachers were inadvertently splashed as a student attempted to throw gasoline into a trash bin, local authorities said. Earlier the prosecutor’s office had said the teachers had been assaulted and “doused in petrol”.

At another school in the city, Saint-Exupery high school, hundreds of young people surrounded a fire truck that had arrived to put out a blaze in the morning, police said. The attackers forced the firefighters to flee the vehicle, then set it alight. Another blaze hit a school in the western city of Nantes, fire crews said.

Teacher sustains injuries after being splashed with petrol during an attempted arson attack

French education minister Edouard Geffray said that he would successively meet representative staff unions, parent associations and student associations on Friday.

Crisis meeting

The demonstrations and blockades, which began last week, have become a political flashpoint at a sensitive moment for the government, which announced a series of deeply unpopular spending cuts in its 2027 budget on Thursday.

Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu’s office held a crisis meeting on the protests, which have left dozens of people injured. Hundreds have also been arrested, most of them teenagers, officials have said.

In the Parisian suburb of Saint-Denis, crowds of young people massed in front of a line of police. One student held up a sign that read: “Can we explain ourselves without being teargassed?” Students have accused the police of using heavy-handed tactics, including the use of teargas. The government has criticised the violence that has broken out during some of the protests, but has said difficulties in high schools should be acknowledged and addressed.

Interior minister Laurent Nunez said that, in some pla­ces, troublemakers were moving from school to school to incite violence. Geffray called for schools to hold classes remotely if protesters were blocking their premises.

“Violence will not keep our students from their fundamental right to an education,” he said in a post on social media platform X. In Nantes, Olivier Chateau, a deputy to the mayor, told broadcaster franceinfo that the fire at Nelson Mandela high school was under control and that there had been no injuries. People in the building had been evacuated, while students due to arrive at the school were turned away, he said. The mayor’s office declined to comment further.

Education Minister Edouard Geffray called for schools to hold classes remotely if protesters were blocking their premises.

“Violence will not keep our students from their fundamental right to an education,” he said in a post on social media platform X.

Published in Dawn, October 2nd, 2026